SOCI 121. Race, Unfreedom, and Statelessness

(Cross listed as BLST 121)
This course examines statelessness, citizenship, and unfreedom as interconnected conditions produced by modern states rather than exceptional failures. Through historical and contemporary cases across the Americas, the Caribbean, and the global South, students analyze how law, documentation, labor regimes, and borders create populations that are formally free yet substantively constrained. Race and labor operate throughout as structuring forces shaping belonging, dispossession, and differential access to rights. Readings draw from sociology, history, legal studies, and Black Studies, pairing theory with empirical cases. Students will interrogate how freedom is unevenly distributed and how unfreedom persists after slavery, emancipation, and decolonization in modern societies.
course counts at 1 credit for majors house in SOAN
Social sciences.
2 credits.
Eligible for BLST
Spring 2027. Veras.
Catalog chapter: Sociology and Anthropology
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/sociology-anthropology

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